


GREAT prank

by DarthKrande, IhaveAbadfeelingAboutThis



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abduction, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bittersweet Ending, Bittersweet ever after, Diagon Alley, Nurmengard, Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter), Post-Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Prison, Seer Gellert Grindelwald, Veritaserum, Weasley twins, Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:34:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23431027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarthKrande/pseuds/DarthKrande, https://archiveofourown.org/users/IhaveAbadfeelingAboutThis/pseuds/IhaveAbadfeelingAboutThis
Summary: The Weasley twins had thought that there would be no greater prank than what they had planned for Messr Padfoot's Veritaserum, but now that they have Dumbledore's biggest secret, they are inspired to pull the greatest prank of all. Nobody thought to ask Grindelwald whether he agreed.
Comments: 24
Kudos: 42





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It's the First of April, international day of fools, pranks and (the birthday of) the two greatest pranksters in wizarding history.

**Prologue**

_A red-headed wizarding couple, the man holding two red-headed boys in his arms while the woman's face contorted in pain. Possibly she was once again in labour._

_A wand shop, not the one belonging to Gregorovich, and an ice cream parlour not far away._

_A short witch talking to Dementors._

_Something blue flying around a train with a red engine – he couldn't make out what it was._

_A brilliant explosion without any context._

_Albus Dumbledore, trying to look serious and angry, but finally failing, bursting out laughing. That beard looked horrible on his face, as did the ridiculous glasses on his nose._

_A wedding, a tall blond groom and a bride in a stunning silver dress, clearly both of them of the purest blood of Wizardkind. A witch similar to her, moving into a house littered by muggle filth, laughing, and crying, then laughing again._

_A dark wizard, sometimes with black hair, sometimes bald. The snake that accompanied him looked familiar, but she hadn't always been a snake._

_A house he recognized from his youth – he couldn't remember where exactly he'd seen it. A rat and the Killing Curse were involved, and a giant, flying away on a muggle vehicle._

_A family, perhaps the one he'd seen before, with both parents and several sons displaying various shades of red hair, and a child with emerald-green eyes entering their home. A young woman with the same red hair, catching a tiny Snitch. She was good looking, a warrior if he'd ever seen one._

Intentionally peering into random aspects of the future had once been an idle amusement, a way to kill time during a boring class at Durmstrang Institute; now it was the only entertainment in his captivity. He'd long since given up on any attempts to break out of Nurmengard – he had already thought of every possible way out when he had still been the lord of the castle and not its sole captive. Clearly, he had done his job too well. And now there was nothing else he could do but stare at the future of other witches and wizards, and wait for his own demise.

He'd caught sight of another warrior female, this one with crazy black curls and an even crazier laugh. She looked identical to the one that married into the muggle household. He had seen one of these, he couldn't tell which one, holding a small child with purple and pink hair, and a werewolf, apparently sane, playing with a boy of turquoise-blue hair.

He kept watching, as there was nothing else to do.

**Chapter 1** \- **Albus** **Dumbledore**

It was a quiet morning at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place. The loss of Sirius Black had cut everyone to the bone: Remus had lost his one and only true friend, the Weasley twins had lost a mentor they'd idolized before even learning his true name, his true identity. The rest of the Order had lost their host, the owner of the house they used as Headquarters – a safe place and a shelter to return to. 

Albus Dumbledore wearily sat down in the kitchen, eyeing the glass of fire whiskey Black had left on the counter. He couldn't help but blame himself for the loss - he should have joined the battle sooner. 

He should have acted sooner. He was late. 

Again. 

He turned his gaze away from the glass, from the reminder of a life cut short. So many things that Sirius had left undone – would now never do. He slowly looked around the table, mentally populating each seat with the members of the Order. No one would sit in Sirius’ seat now. How many other seats would stand empty before this war was won? 

Albus had nearly finished his census when he saw it – a bottle of fire whiskey and a tumbler. He sighed. There was no one here but himself and Sirius’ half empty glass. And Sirius would have been the last person to judge him for having fire whiskey for breakfast. He poured three fingers and held his glass up towards the glass on the counter. “To sacrifice.” And he drank. 

Odd, that fire whiskey tasted watery, but its effect was more burning than the undiluted drink. It made him feel guiltier than he'd felt in decades. Who was he fooling? He'd arrived too late to save the one man young Harry could turn to. He had let Harry down, of all people; he had known what Voldemort was planning, and he had done nothing to stop it. Now the child had inadvertently caused the death of his own godfather. Not that the fact that it was unintentional would make his guilt any less, as Albus knew all too well. 

'I let Harry make a scapegoat out of himself,' he thought, and refilled the glass once again. 

'I have not been this honest with myself since the Aurors came for Dad,' was his next thought, then he stared at the fire whiskey in the large bottle, and noted that it contained enough for the entire Order. 

Well, it wasn't like there were many drinkers, these days. They couldn't afford themselves the luxury of not being battle-ready at all times. Even Sirius had refrained from indulging in more alcohol than what could be (no, could have been) compensated for with one dose of sober-up potion. But today.... today would be a quiet day after a defeat for both parties. Not even Voldemort would attack - he needed to reorganize his troops. 

It wouldn’t hurt to have another glass. Or two. 

Albus couldn’t have said how many glasses he had had, alone in the kitchen, when he heard footsteps, belonging to four feet in total, and he felt the tickle of a Hominum Revelio charm. He wasn’t worried about it - why would he try to hide himself? He didn't even put down the half empty glass he'd been nursing. There was no reason to make it look like it was somebody else who had drunk that much of the whiskey. Sirius wouldn't have minded.... 

Wait, no. If he had heard right and the last official Black heir would be Harry, then he'd been drinking the whiskey of his own fifteen-year-old student. This was bad. Wasn’t it? Not that Harry was old enough to have a use for fire whiskey. But still… 

The Weasley twins entered the kitchen, a mixture of pride and grief clear on their face. When they spotted their headmaster with the half full tumbler, they exchanged curious looks, before one of them stepped closer. “Umm, Professor? Were you the only one who drank from this bottle this morning?” 

“To the best of my knowledge, yes.” 

This was the most accurate answer he could give. 

“Did you talk to anybody since you took the first gulp today?” asked the other twin. How irritating it was that he couldn't tell which one was which. 

“No.” 

“Did you take any of the antidote cookies?” 

“I have no knowledge of antidote cookies, but the last thing I ate was last night’s dinner, prepared by the Hogwarts elves as usual.” 

At the mention of that, the twin on the left suddenly remembered to ask, “Have you seen Kreacher today, or do you know where he is now?” 

“No and no.” His mind was running wild. Antidote cookies? Antidote to what? 

And then he understood. He glared at the bottle on the table, as if he could make it not be what it clearly was. How had he not noticed? Its contents too thin and too pale, as if it were watered down... His own peculiar honesty, especially to himself... 

Veritaserum. 

“How much did you put in that?” he asked, his trepidation rising, settling in his thickening throat. 

“Well, Professor, it's not like we are compelled to honestly answer you...” 

“Especially not after our little adopted brother just pointed out how little you told him...” 

“...or us, now that we think of it.” 

“But you were our favourite teacher at Hogwarts,” 

“Among those who never taught a single class to us, anyway,” 

“So, you deserve an honest answer. We found it in Sirius's room.” 

“Thought he might have been looking for a way to clear his own name.” 

“His own or Harry's. ‘The Boy Who Lies,' have you read what the much renowned Rita Skeeter wrote, backed up by Cornelius Fudge?” 

He nodded, and the twins continued after casting anti-eavesdropping charms. 

“We thought it would be a proper way to honour his memory if we shared it evenly with the Order. Too bad that you came along and drank half the bottle alone.” 

“What you drank should have been enough for a dozen of us,” 

“A werewolf included,” the one leaning against the kitchen door pointed out. 

The other cast a complicated spell on a woven basket holding cookies that he'd not even noticed until now. It had to be the same spell Gringotts used to block summoning in some of their vaults. Or at least some variation on that spell. Their older brother Bill must have brought the knowledge home from his job at the bank. 

With the antidote out of his reach, the twins sat down on either side of him, as if for a friendly chat. He tried to mute them somehow, but the alcohol he'd consumed prevented proper spell-casting. 

“Don't worry, Professor, we won't make unfair use of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” the twin closest to the door promised. 

“But there's one thing we've been wondering so many sleepless nights.” 

There was a moment of silence as both Weasleys looked at each other, as if encouraging the other to speak. Eventually, the one guarding the cookies spoke up, “You have always helped us out, no matter what pranks we played at school, no matter who we played them on.” 

“Including you! There were those phoenix feathers we glued to your scarlet and ruby ceremonial robe, so that it looked like you had sprouted a tail! That was the night of the Sorting...” 

“...in our fourth year. The one Ronnikins and Harry missed. Do you remember?” 

How could he have forgotten? 

“Yes, of course.” 

“Why do you let us get away with everything?” 

Now there was silence again, no other question that could be answered instead of this one. 

“Because you remind me of someone,” the Veritaserum eventually forced out of him. 

“Family of yours?” 

“Close to you?” 

“Not anymore.” 

The twins replied with “Aww...” in unison, before the one with the cookies asked, “Love interest?” 

He only fought for a moment before he admitted, “You could call it that.” 

“But you never got married!” the other yelped. Then, “Did she die early?” 

“No.” 

“You loved a married witch?” 

“No!” he replied vehemently. 

“A muggle?” 

“I wish...” 

“Then what ha...” 

“George, it's just getting interesting!” the one at the door, so possibly but not necessarily Fred, interrupted. “So, a love interest, not married, not dead, not a muggle... And yet, unknown...” 

“Not a witch?” 

“Not a witch.” 

“And not a muggle. Not even a squib girl?” 

If he had not been so inebriated, he may well have just turned the boys into brooms. What were they thinking, drugging him with truth serum and now playing Twenty Questions? Not that the twins were likely to stop at twenty… And they were not trying to figure out what spell he was thinking of. No, they were unearthing his most private feelings – feelings that he didn't admit to himself, even on a good day. 

It was George who figured it out, after half a minute of silent musing. “Wizard.” 

“Yes.” 

“Come on, professor, that's nothing to be ashamed of, unless, he is, I don't know...” 

“Not You-Know-Who, is it?” 

Ha! If only things were that simple. If only he loved a man so easy to despise, a man whose true nature was so transparent... 

“If only...” 

There was a second round of “Awww.” 

“There’s no call for you to mock me,” he quietly pointed out. Apparently, the Veritaserum allowed him to talk about something other than what'd been asked, and what he had stated was the purest truth. 

“But we want to help you, Professor.” 

“You cannot.” 

“Is he dead?” 

“Did he reject your company this year?” 

“No and no.” 

Fred scratched his head. 

“We’re on the wrong track.” 

“Maybe. Professor? If we manage to figure it out, would you prefer for us to obliviate you so that you won't feel bad for telling us?” 

He was not concerned about his feelings as much as he was with what these boys would think of him. But since they had already found him inebriated, and heavily dosed with Veritaserum, there was no saving his dignity or his reputation. And, as they'd pointed out, there was a reason he'd never stood in their way. 

“That would save me some embarrassment.” 

After a relieved sigh from both young men, the one still guarding the cookies asked, “Have we ever met him?” 


	2. 02 - Gellert Grindelwald

It had been raining for hours and it was due to continue for days. The wind whistled through the narrow window of his closely confined world. Gellert regarded the view - the clouds were getting darker by the minute as the sun set behind the majestic peaks. The temperature was dropping rapidly. There was another storm about to start. Not that he really minded – he would only witness it – the storm could not touch him, like the rest of the outside world to which it belonged. 

He turned away from the window, thinking better of watching the clouds approach. Why would he torment himself by looking out onto a world he would never return to? To choose whether to stand in a storm – that was a freedom that he would never regain – like so many other freedoms. He settled on the bed. It was hard, but still the most comfortable spot he had access to. Maybe he would be dreaming of Quidditch again. He had continued to see brooms over the past few days. 

The first bright flash of lightning, the first distant roar of thunder. He rose and returned to the window, because the parade of bolts was a spectacle. There were dark clouds now everywhere, the last hues of the sunset only visible in little spots. Another thunderbolt, this one so much closer, and so bright that he was seeing dark spots even after the crack had ceased to echo in his ears. 

Odd - those dark spots were not disappearing, they were even growing in size. In the same spot, surrounded by lightning, the two of them levitated as if they were some odd phenomenon... or.... this couldn't be.... They were broom riders approaching! 

Two dark caped wizards, with odd tools tied to the hind parts of their brooms. From what he could make out, they were both white and no older than twenty, they were definitely coming in Nurmengard's direction, their dark rain-repelling capes billowing in the wind. Illuminated by the next flash for a second, one seemed to be carrying some sort of a cannonball. 

The two broom riders circled twice around the lonely tower, then gestured to one other before taking symmetrical positions not thirty meters from the window. Maybe the thunder and the wind suppressed their voices, but the prisoner got the impression they weren’t even trying to talk. 

Considering that there might be eavesdropping spells on his cell, so that everything would be overheard in some vigilant auror's office, this wasn't a stupid precaution. Still, he hoped to catch a few words, if only to figure out what part of the world these two might have come from. 

Then there was a huge bang as the first broom rider released the cannonball, and it crashed harmlessly against the wards on his tiny window. The ball ricocheted, now flying towards the other rider... 

From the tiny window, Gellert couldn't tell what happened next, but a few moments later there was a groundshaking bang on the opposite side of his cell, in the solid wall that wasn't as strongly warded as the tiny window. In half a minute, the bang was repeated. 

About the same time, the rain started, the wind blowing the cold drops of water through his window, and since he didn’t want to step back and lose sight on the mysterious wizards, the front of his old grey robe was soaked almost immediately. 

Gellert heard another bang, this time at the other side of the cell, then at the window again a few seconds later. An even louder bang followed, and the cold night wind came in through some cracks around the presumed point of impact. With the next loud crash, he had a new window right next to the cell door, and judging by the amount of rainwater getting in, this new opening was growing with each impact. 

Still no word was spoken, no wand was drawn. But the cannonball returned again and again, hammering the wall until his entire small cell was filled with debris mixed with rainwater. 

He wouldn't have believed it possible, but half of a wall had been knocked down in a matter of maybe five minutes. Impressive. Whoever these broom riders were, they knew what they were doing... Too bad that he understood nothing of their motives. He could think of nobody who would want him to be free, and nobody who would dare face the entire world's rage for a mercy killing, either. Perhaps now that they had destroyed his cell, they would simply leave. If anybody wanted to torment him, the forlorn promise of a rescue would work better than any form of torture. His supporters were long gone, the last of them having rallied to the side of some new dark lord or another. And not even his Sight had warned him... _what could these broom riders want_? 

Soon the new hole in the wall was large enough that perhaps he could have crawled through – even if that would have meant falling to his death. Gellert considered whether this was an appealing thought or not. He thought of the third brother, who greeted Death as an old friend. 

But the next bang against his cell wall broke off this train of thought. Falling to his death was something to consider later. He was too curious about what these unlooked-for visitors would do next. After a few more hits, the hole had become quite large, and he knew that whatever else might befall him, this self-made cell wouldn't hold him anymore. He would be leaving, one way or another, and he was ready. 

The cannonball's repeated crashing into the wall continued, and finally he could make out the two broom riders against the dark, cloudy sky through the hole. They both were holding clubs or batons of some sort, and both sported armour not unlike that of a beater. 

Oh, now it made sense to him! Every reasonable wizard would guard his windows against loose bludgers, especially if they had raised a Quidditch enthusiast or two. Of course, it never occurred to him _not_ to ward the prison in that manner. But who would have thought about applying the same, simple but very specific spells to the rest of the structure? Thank everything sacred, he had not! 

Once the bludger that had brought down this once-glorious fortress had been bound, the other rider flew close enough to, presumably, take a closer look at him. 

Gellert Grindelwald would have listed many attributes of himself before his vanity, but standing barefoot in a rain-flooded cell in nothing but a grimy, torn robe that had faded into colourlessness decades prior, weak and without a wand… he would have called himself a laughingstock rather than a wizard aspiring to lead Wizardkind and master the greatest power in the world. 

The two riders had yet to say a word, but the closer one gave a dismissive hand signal to the other, who soon vanished from his field of vision, probably to circle the tower that held his tiny cell. Then he spotted something he'd missed before: a third broom that had been following that rider from a safe distance. Now the closer wizard was holding on to its twigs. As the other beater flew, the free broom was turning around. Presumably when the out of sight wizard reached his position on the opposite side, this one released the spare broom – and immediately, it darted off from its former holder, with the handle pointed straight at the large hole in the wreckage of the cell. All the prisoner had to do was to grab it and take a seat on the comfortably thick, magically cushioned handle. 

If he had had any delusions about the beaters' intention, those were gone the moment his two palms made contact with the glue on the handle. Even worse, the broomstick seemed to completely ignore his will, only following the other rider's movements from a fixed distance. But any chance was more than nothing, and no magic could have ever kept him for eternity! The broom slowly circled around the cell, then it flew out into the stormy summer night, the dark wizard sitting firmly on the sturdy handle. 

How he had longed to fly again! How he had missed the wind enveloping his body, the change of (barely visible) scenery when they picked up speed! The rain, well, not so much. Neither did he care for having the other rider behind him, following them on a much more agile broom, ensuring that he didn't break formation. And he had no idea where they were headed. 

They were flying more or less north, that much was certain. Where to? Durmstrang? Would he be used as a demonstration subject to the younger generation? At least he would be familiar with his new surroundings, a key element to a successful escape. 

A tingle on his skin sometime later marked that they had crossed a border. Either it was a ridiculously weak one, or his sense of magic had diminished in captivity. He'd seen distant glowing under the clouds – those had to be cities of some sort. 

They crossed another, just as weak border and soon took a left turn. If they had been going north until now, they'd turned north-west. Clearly, if his abductors had wished to keep him informed, they would have done so by now. Initiating a chat was impossible at this speed, especially as the leader was several meters in front of him, and the agile broom's rider was keeping watch. Even if they were talkative people on a normal day, he hadn't heard a sound from them tonight. 

They left the storm behind them and were now flying under thinner clouds and the scant silvery light of the waning crescent moon. He was surprised at how bright and large the (mostly muggle) settlements were, and at the tiny moving white and red lights of the numerous vehicles. During the war these would have presented a number of wonderful targets, but as he had spent so many decades in isolation, he couldn't even tell which place was which. 

The moonlight was too pale for him to make out the letters on the broom handle, but by the lack of Cyrillic characters, his previous guess at flying partially westwards seemed to be correct. He noticed that the layer of clouds was so thin here he could make out some of the constellations above – how long it had been since his lessons in navigation! There was Cygnus, bright Cassiopeia, Ursa Minor with Polaris. 

He savoured the long flight. He was outside! Outside! Yes, he was also cold, in nothing but a wet threadbare robe, over a hundred years old, and probably headed to a prison worse than the one in which he had spent the past five decades, give or take, but all of those things were laughable in the face of having left the cell he had once intended for his worst enemies. 

They reached the Nordic Sea, crossing yet another weak border, continuing in the same direction. A part of him had been secretly hoping for Durmstrang as their destination, but almost as soon as they flew above international waters, they changed direction again, now clearly towards the Atlantic Ocean. The pale moonlight finally allowed him to read the inscription on the broom handle. ‘Cleansweep’. 

As far as he remembered, it was a British company, and had a reputation for lasting quality products. 

Britain, then. 

He was still barefoot and without a single heating charm, and they appeared to be heading straight into another thick storm cloud. Instead of rainwater this time, he got splashes of brine foam in his face. It might be the middle of the summer, but that didn’t mean the water was warm. And the stickiness of the salt adhered to his face and his clothing. With his hands still glued to the broom handle, he couldn’t wipe the salty water from his forehead and eyelashes – the best he could do to keep the water from his eyes was to rub them with the salt-water soaked sleeve of his worn robe. 

Either the waves were becoming larger, or they were flying lower - not that one possibility would have excluded the other. At first, Gellert’s toes only reached the peaks of the waves, but a few minutes later he was in knee-deep. So was the rider whose broom he was following. The one on the agile broom was now circling above them, keeping watch for sea monsters, possibly. 

The two brooms reached sea level, and both slowed down, but they kept moving forward. The rider in front of him turned back and cast a bubblehead charm on him. Then all three of them dove under. 

Cold would be an understatement. Cold and dark. All he could see was darkness. His robe was likely to give out any time now, held together as it was mostly by his sweat and grime, and the dust that had gotten stuck in the folds over all these decades. At least the accumulated grime on his body was effectively washed away, even if this was not exactly the bath he'd been longing for. At some point in his life he'd have laughed at this extreme level of overdone soaking – as if he were making up for years of missed baths all at once. At least he wouldn't have his decades-old stench when they arrived. If only he could have cast a heating charm... His teeth would have clattered if he still had any. 

A sudden feeling of being unwelcome rushed through him, followed by the urge to turn around and leave. It was a strong repellent charm, one that might have taken a lot of willpower to ignore. Now, however, he wasn't in control of where he was going, so the spell caused him a passing discomfort but nothing more. As it didn't seem to affect the other two, he once again concluded that they either had to be British or they enjoyed political protection here. 

The brooms continued their underwater 'flight'. The bubblehead charm held - he could breathe like normal, but the rest of his body was directly exposed to the unwelcoming seawater. It was little comfort that his abductors might be suffering in the same way. Whoever had paid for them to fetch him, he wondered how long it had taken to convince them. Perhaps not long. These two seemed to be professional troublemakers, and quite good at their jobs. 

The brooms broke the surface when they were maybe a hundred meters from the dry land. He saw a dark mass in front of him, unbroken by the many lights he'd seen earlier. There were scarce, distant lights on his right, but that was all. Neither of the two wizards bothered to end the bubble on his head or to dry either him or themselves. 

Once in the air again, the wind didn't quite feel summery warm. It was hard to say how much of that was due to the water still clinging to his skin and his hair, and permeating his robe. The agile rider rose high above him and the one his broom followed, perhaps to check the perimeter. That broom of his was quite a fast one, even compared to the Cleansweep he was stuck to. How much had the broom making industry evolved since the war? 

They took a sharp turn right. Judging by the shimmers here and there, they seemed to be following a river running through a forest. They reached a lake, passed a small village, then they finally landed on an island in a swamp. 

“We did it!” the one he had been unwillingly following suddenly yelled as he dismounted. Taking that as a cue, the aged wizard did the same. The mud was soft under his feet. 

“Yes, we're awesome!” the agile broom's rider replied. “Finite.” 

“Tergeo.” 

“Tergeo.” 

Their use of verbal spells, even for these easy incantations, indicated that they were just as young as they both sounded. At least he was dried and could breathe fresh air again. 

“This Firebolt is every twig as awesome as it seems.” 

“I wouldn't trade with Harry, you know. Not being able to fly all summer is just horrible.” 

“Huge shame.” 

Their voices sounded identical, he noticed. They stood at the same height as well. 

The one who'd been leading him turned around, examining their catch for a moment. What could they make out in the shadows? An old wreck of a wizard in a torn and faded (although now quite clean) robe, standing barefoot in the mud, holding a broom with both hands because he was still glued to it. 

“Good evening, gentlemen,” Gellert tried. His voice sounded weak even to himself, the first words without the echo on the plain stone walls. 

“Aye, good evening,” the one with the slower broom replied, then grabbed him by the elbow and apparated them away. 

They landed in a dimly lit street. The air was full of magic, so it had to either be a purely wizarding village or the famous Diagon Alley in London. By the distant noise, he guessed the latter. 

The other rider appeared next to them, and he was guided to one of the shops – no distinguishing feature could be made out in the darkness, although it didn't appear to be small or humble by any means. 

Inside it was warm and welcoming, not a trace of dark magic around. 

“Lumos Interios,” the one with the fast broom cast, producing light that was dim, but plenty bright enough to illuminate the entire hall. 

It was a shop indeed, although their goods couldn't be easily defined. One side held foodstuffs, in a corner there were clothes, he recognized Peruvian instant darkness powder on a shelf and a cageful of miscoloured puffskeins near a window. Nothing that wouldn't need at least some tinkering before it could be made into a weapon. 

The two wizards took off their capes. They were either identical twins, or the result of really well performed self-transfiguration. They had the red hair he'd seen in his visions and a healthy shade of white skin. Both of them were dressed in beater's uniforms, and one of them was still carrying the bound bludger. They rushed up the stairs. Gellert couldn't help but go after them, as his broom was still following one of the young men. The other cast a Scourgify at his feet so that he wouldn't soil the floor with swamp mud. 

The flat above the shop wasn't nearly as fancy as the shop below: one bedroom, one small kitchen, a well-warded workshop and a large cupboard of supplies. If there _were_ any other rooms, they could only be reached by way of another. The accommodations weren't exactly to his taste, but then he remembered that, by contrast, his cell had been his own design. 

“All right, Your Great-goodness, it's time to get that glue off,” one of them said, after securing the bludger in a wooden box and carefully laying the brooms and the beating clubs in another. 

Great-goodness. Gellert sneered. He might be at their mercy now, but he would remember every insult, not least this mocking title. 

The Cleansweep in his hands pulled him after the young redhead until they arrived in the bedroom. It was spacious, resembling a dormitory with its three beds and a chaos of books and sheets of parchment and at least five quills lying around. He found no paintings on the walls, only a map of Magical Britain and the printed photographs of witches on brooms. There was one wardrobe, which was unusual for a place inhabited by three. 

Two, he immediately corrected himself as he stepped over the line of ward runes etched in the floor. Tricky. Anyone could walk over it in one direction, but only the flat's owners could pass it in the other. So, he was going to share a room with his abductors. Escape would not be easy – they had already brought down a prison's security, and so likely had taken a great many precautions. He didn't have time to examine the wards more closely, but they seemed to be blocking magic in a way similar to them blocking passage. 

The bathroom was on his side of the three-person dormitory. It was equipped with a double washbasin, one shower, there was space left for (presumably) a more dignified bathtub. There was a muggle-style flushable toilet, although, just like the washbasin's two taps, its tank was based around an Aguamenti spell. 

He would have continued examining his surroundings, but an attenuated variation on the jelly-legs jinx hit him from behind. He remained standing, but it took quite an effort. Two similar spells hit his upper arms, not paralyzing them entirely, but preventing any sophisticated movement. 

The one Gellert had been unwillingly following around now pulled him over to one of the basins. The young man started pouring a pale yellow liquid on the glued broom handle with one hand, while using the other hand to rub the liquid against Gellert’s glued fingers. It was silky, like oil. Finally, the glue gave, and the young wizard dried his now free hands with another Tergeo. He cast the spell with an ochre wand with a slight bend near the handle; a very brief vision showed this wand exploding in its master's hand. 

“I’m George, by the way. The almost as good-looking one is Fred. Fred and George Weasley, proud owners of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes.” 

“And you will be our next great project,” the other one, Fred, continued. “Somebody you know was getting depressed over your absence, so we decided to go and fetch you.” 

“Too bad, you look like crap.” 

He wholeheartedly agreed with that. From what he'd seen of himself in the mirror, he was a wrinkled old man now, still tall but nowhere near as intimidating. His bodyweight might have equaled that of the broom that had brought him here. He knew better than to try wandless magic right under his abductors' noses, but he didn't suppose he would have much success. Trying to fight against the effects of the mild jinxes had been taxing enough. 

Now that Gellert’s hands were free of the Cleansweep, Fred pulled a chair from the kitchen and sat him down in it. George went to place the broom next to the two others, and perhaps to change out of the beater’s uniform. 

“Just what colour are your eyes?!” The remaining twin... Weasley stared into his face. 

“Clashing,” he grinned. Clearly, there wasn't a no-talking policy in place, but he didn't want to press his luck with questions. 

“Really cool. Now sit still. This won't feel too good.” 

Horrible pain cut into his mouth as soon as Fred Weasley raised his wand. It felt like a localized version of the Cruciatus, bone-burning. He could hardly fight back a scream. The spell was lifted for only a moment before the pain returned, this time in his jaw. He suppressed a moan and attempted to focus on figuring out what the spell could be. The incantation was unlike anything he'd heard before - the wand movement reminded him of a transfiguration spell, but the yellow flash of spell-fire looked a bit like Obliviation, though the effects couldn't have been more different. 

After yet another brief pause, the torture continued, spreading towards his throat, and no matter how he tried not to give away his pain, tears were welling up in his eyes. It was undignified. 

“I know. Almost done,” the wizard said in a quiet tone. “There, ready. You took it really well.” 

His whole mouth hurt, like he'd been trying to swallow a firedrake, but at least the curse had indeed been lifted – if it was a curse at all. The most distinctive trait of a curse seemed to be missing: there didn't seem to be any malicious intent. Perhaps it was some sort of a security spell yet unknown to him, something to prevent him from turning against the boy. If so, he'd better prepare himself for a second round from the other twin. 

He stumbled to the nearer of the two washbasins, touched the blue disk embedded above the tap, and hastily washed his face and flushed his mouth as much as he could. Neither of the twins moved to stop him, but that didn't do much good against the residual pain in his gingiva. 

“Your pain tolerance is really high,” the one named George mused aloud. 

“You took it so much better than I did in second year,” Fred admitted. He tried not to frown at this. Either Hogwarts had some really strange policies, or he could drop the security spell theory. And they said Durmstrang students were taught dark magic? 

“Fred only lost four of his molars after Leo Fudge crashed into him, and he was still whining like a baby.” 

“What my brother wants to say is that _Leo Fudge_ whined. _I_ loudly demanded pain potions and a numbing spell.” 

“But Madame Pomfrey, the school matron, said those would obstruct the regrowing spell and the new teeth would have grown in positioned randomly.” 

He blinked twice. Had that been a disproportionately painful tooth regrowing spell, one these young men had randomly picked up from some caretaker? What was the great Albus Dumbledore, a transfiguration expert even back when he'd been roughly their age, now teaching to the modern-day young wizards? 

He checked with his tongue. No teeth were growing back yet, but the still lingering pain could very well be a herald of those. If so, his first night out of Nurmengard wasn't going to end on a high note. “Has it ever occurred to you that she wouldn't have wanted you to risk your dental integrity ever again?” He suppressed a malicious glee at the flash of recognition on their identical faces. 

“Well, we were already in our second year...” George admitted, chastened. But he shed his shame all too quickly. “Now, your Great-goodness, we need the bathroom too. Unless you have any business here, your bed is that way. Pyjamas are under the blanket.” 

That was rude on multiple levels, but a snappy comeback would have helped little. Out of the three wizards, he was the only one without a wand, behind on several decades of news, and unable to cross the runic line on the floor. 

He found the pyjamas, and though he was more than ready to shed his robe (a garment that was more than twice as old as his captors) he hesitated. After Nurmengard, he had thought that he had been prepared to face any indignity if it meant escape – surely nothing could be worse than the tedium of living in the same small squalid room for so many years. But these pyjamas - a hand-me-down set with a childish embroidered lion cub prancing on the shirt, not even his size… he had his standards! Not that his faded, torn rag met those either, but to put on such a garment _willingly_ … 

With the heavy sigh of a defeated man, he changed into the lion cub pyjamas. His legs, still shaky with the jinx, would only support his weight for so long. 

At least the bed was comfortable. It felt almost alien to him after the pallet he had been sleeping on for so many years... There was a real bedsheet, and it was clean, even if it clearly wasn't new. And when was the last time he'd seen a pillow this close? Now, if only he could sleep without his gums still aching with the growing set of teeth. 

As he settled in for the night, his gaze fell on the line of etched runes and on the corner of a magazine that just covered the writing. He had to fight with his limbs to carry out his will, but he eventually managed to get out of bed. The wards stung his hand as he reached for the magazine, but he managed to grab it. Not feeling up to more wandering, he crawled back into bed with the copy of Seeker Weekly. 

Lying comfortably at last, Gellert checked the publication date of what couldn't even be the last issue. 3rd of May, 1996. 

His captivity had lasted fifty-one years, then. He had wondered once or twice if he had miscounted. Now he knew: he'd been wrong by one year. 

He fell asleep with the magazine still in his hands. 


	3. 03 - Gellert Grindelwald

“...still out." 

“He's been reading all night, perhaps.” 

He instinctively turned to face the wall and pulled the tangled blanket tighter around himself. Why should he wake? He'd had such a wonderful dream, of flying, of clean clothes, of talking to two of Dumbledore's apprentices... 

“Should we…" 

“…wake him? Look at him!” 

“Yes, we can’t let His Skeletalness skip breakfast.” 

Gellert groaned. The dream had been real. Which meant that he was going to be hearing a lot more of… 

“Ah! Your Great-goodness! You are awake!” 

Yes, now he was. At least he was not in Nurmengard any longer. He had a real pillow, and glass in the windows and – did one of the twins say something about breakfast? Gellert sat up and rubbed his still aching jaw. He ran his tongue over his – teeth! Good to know that even with the addition of such unnecessary pain, the spell had worked. He looked up to see the two young men peering at him with a strange intensity, as if he were a creature in a zoo. He could wait. 

They looked at one another for an entire minute before one of the twins started laughing. “Oh, you’re good. This is going to be fun, isn’t it Fred?" 

“I’m not Fred! You’re Fred.” 

Then they both turned to Gellert and smiled. He rolled his eyes. “I don’t really care about your names,” he lied. After all, it was not untrue that knowing the name of a thing gave you power over it. Certainly, people felt a connection to anyone who simply knew their name. It would be important to know which was Fred and which was George. But for now, “But I do care about breakfast.” 

“By all means, your Great-goodness.” 

“We, your humble servants, would be delighted to wait upon you." 

“Would eggs be to your liking, milord?” 

"Perhaps some toast, our resident Prince of Darkness?” 

“Unfortunately, neither of us can cook, particularly,” one of the redheads said over his shoulder as he walked through the door. He returned with a basket of bananas. So much for breakfast, Gellert thought. 

After eating their bananas, the twins gave Gellert some clothes. Like the pyjamas, the day clothes weren't new, but at least they had fit everything to his size. Along with the clothes, however, he had to endure a few jabs about not having his travel trunk ready. 

Gellert had been too exhausted – also too debilitated by the jinxes and the tooth regrowing charm – to wash the night before. He had feared that they were going to continually renew the jelly-legs jinx, but since they did not, he excused himself to take a proper shower. Slipping under the magical border of Britain on a submarine broom didn't exactly count, and it had left his hair matted with salt and grime. Even clean, it would be nowhere near the fur-like crown he once had had - his hair was brittle because of the malnutrition and had been kept short with spells he had had to perform without a wand and without a mirror. 

“A personal question, Your Great-goodness: how in the hell did you manage to burn half the world if you spend all of your waking time in the shower?” one of the redheads asked after a few minutes. The great disadvantage of boarding schools was that they produced people with no sense of personal privacy; he had to spell the vapour thicker to cover himself while his keepers, one after the other, were using the toilet in the same room. 

“I only had to ignite it!” he shouted back over the noise of the shower. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, it occurred to him that this might not be a successful approach - these Dumbledore-trained twins might react better to remorse. The problem was that it was hard to act remorseful when they were constantly baiting him. 

He turned off the water, allowing him to add more quietly, “There were conflicts everywhere. Some were long-standing, requiring us to stay out of the muggles’ way. Some conflicts arose from the incompetence and paranoia of the survivors of previous wars. Fear and disorder are inevitable when long-accepted, established hierarchies collapse, and unknowns suddenly rise to leadership to fill the vacuum.” The boy didn't seem inclined to argue with him, but neither did they seem inclined to listen. Being ignored hurt his pride, more so than disagreement would have done. This Weasley wasn't interested in history! 

Oh, but of course! Why had these young men smuggled him out of Nurmengard? Why was their respect for him this severely lacking? Because they didn't care about what he had done! He was a curiosity to them, someone famous and feared, but the age gap was too large for them to view him as an enemy. Even their parents would have no memory of him at his height. Now this was something he could work with. To hell with showing remorse! He was working with a blank page. 

When Gellert emerged from the bathroom he found one of the boys tending to a pair of miniature pink puffskeins. He observed the young wizard: now that Grindelwald was paying attention, he could see a strange vibration in his future. He would either be there or not. Both outcomes were equally possible. Perhaps there would be some sort of danger this Weasley either would or would not survive. Even with the usual uncertainties that every wizard faced, this future-or-no-future vibration was still extremely rare. 

“Where’s your brother?” 

“Which one? Bill's in Egypt, Charlie's in Romania, Ronald is perhaps de-gnoming the garden with Gin, I left Percy intentionally out. Oh, you mean George. Getting us breakfast, I hope.” Well, he'd seen the large red-head family. With only one son possibly disowned, they made a considerable and strong unit. “An entire quidditch team, I guess.” 

The young one only blinked up from the furballs' cage, then continued his work. “Nah, we have two seekers and the keeper has a ridiculous stage fright. But even if we could get Ginny to play chaser and if Bill were to somehow regain his interest, dear Percy is too preoccupied kissi... Let's not talk about him.” 

So the 'missing' son of the family was not entirely disowned, nor a squib. He was ‘preoccupied kissing...’ Perhaps he was about to marry below his station. Still, seven children and all of them magical, that was something to be proud of. 

“I knew couples who'd not risk a third child, because of the risk it'd be born magickless.” 

After a moment of reluctant silence, the boy admitted, “Mom has a squib brother. I guess she insists we don't spend time with him because she thinks we don't know how to behave in a muggle environment.” Then with a sudden move he tried to toss the old contents of the puffskeins' drinking bowl at the senior wizard, who instinctively wandlessly vanished the pinkish water drops mid-air. He tried not to appear too smug at his reflexes. Not that it wasn’t satisfying, and reassuring to know that he wasn’t entirely helpless, even if the only thing he successfully defended himself against was a bowl of tainted water. 

Perhaps more interesting was receiving an honest answer about one of the family's secrets. This kid, if not George then he had to be Fred, showed no fear or self-restraint when revealing vulnerabilities to him. Of course, he wouldn't be able to use any of the information he might glean if he was going to be handed over to whoever they'd had in mind, but if he'd be staying for a while, this cavalier attitude could prove to be advantageous. 

Right now, showing innocent appreciation was in order. ”You’re not boring people, that much I have already noticed.” 

Fred laughed, closed the puffskeins’ cage, sat down cross-legged on his own bed, and started bragging about childhood pranks they'd played. Gellert listened carefully – it was a good idea to know his captor’s capabilities. They seemed to be skilled at charms, transfiguration, potions, conjuring… they had made a portable swamp! Created candies that transfigured the one who consumed them! And they had experience circumventing security – they had apparently known several secret ways in and out of Hogwarts. Interesting. He had been impressed with their daring, but obviously they also had an interest in defying authority, the capacity to spot and exploit the weaknesses in systems, the ability to make detailed plans, and any number of talents that allowed them to carry out those plans. 

Gellert’s best chance against the twins, as he was now, relatively weak and wandless, would be to take advantage of their naivete and affability. They were holding him behind these wards, yes. But nevertheless, they seemed to trust him with personal information – details about what they were capable of and what they most cared about. Or at least Fred trusted him. He would have to see about George. 

Fred was still chattering away about some products they had developed in the past few months when George entered, carrying two paper bags that had yellow curves on their sides. 

“I asked Hermione about the muggle method of quickly gaining weight,” he announced without preamble. He threw both bags on the same bed Fred was sitting on, then sat down next to him. He didn't have the same vibration of an ambiguous future, so it would be easy to tell them apart now that he knew what to look for. Also, George was wearing muggle clothing of dubious quality – including ill-fitting pants of a canvas-like material. His brother, on the other hand, was in pyjamas still. 

“She suggested ‘fast food’ and pointed me to a few likely restaurants. She also told me about this drink called ‘soda,’ which is named for the sodium the muggles once used to make it fizzy, though it doesn't have real salt in it anymore.” 

“That sounds like a very Hermione description,” Fred said with a nod. “Come, Great One, you've starved for far too long.” 

He huffed at being mocked once again, but at least it was something other than 'your Great-goodness'. He braced himself for the muggle food, preparing for the worst, despite the mouth-watering smells coming from the paper bags. 

How uncivilized that muggle meal was! Eating straight out of a paper wrapping! Eating oily fried potato strips with bare hands! But at least both were tasty, and the sensation of being able to chew again was worth the pain of growing new teeth in place of the ones he had lost so long ago. 

The drink George had called ‘soda’ was dark like a featherweight potion, but its bubbles looked exactly like those in champagne. The bottle was nothing like glass: soft and light, making him wonder if it could be transfigured into wearable wings. The taste of this product was far less impressive. Whoever this ‘Hermione’ was, she clearly did not care about flavour. 

After breakfast, Fred retreated to the bathroom to shower, and George carried their trash off into the kitchen. The boys were continually moving in and out of the room ‘getting ready for work.’ 

“The shop opens in thirty minutes,” George explained to Gellert, then poked his head into the bathroom and loudly shouted, “Thirty minutes!” 

“He always leaves getting ready until the very last minute. One day, he is going to show up downstairs in his pyjamas. Actually, that’s not a bad idea – pyjama day!” Gellert thought that this would be, in fact, a very bad idea, but it was better not to say so – voicing his opinion might easily lead to him being denied day clothes. The less he contradicted them about these small things, the better. 

Finally, Fred was ready, and he and George scurried away to open the shop, finally leaving ‘His Great-goodness' alone to inspect his surroundings. 

The house had a mostly wooden structure, with only the outer walls being made of brick. The fire-proofing spells were old, but still holding. The floor, into which the runes had been recently etched, had an extra layer of protection. 

The bedroom still resembled a dormitory in the daylight, but warm summer air was coming in, because the windows both here and in the workshop were open. Nice temperature, nice bed, disrespectful youngsters, a humiliating lack of proper clothes, quidditch magazines, a few potions and transfiguration textbooks on the shelves, and free access to the bathroom. So many possibilities... 

His cell had been so empty that all he could summon had been a tangled knot of his own hair. Now he had the stationery to practice his wandless magic on, and given that he might never again hold a wand, practicing was essential. He was a bit disappointed, although not entirely surprised, that he could only reach objects from within the runic line. Most of the interesting-looking books were off limits. 

An article in a quidditch magazine from 1994 provided the only reading of real interest to him. That year's World Cup had been held here, in Magical Britain, and the finals had been disturbed by activists called 'Death Eaters'. Their leader's name was ridiculous. ‘He Who Must Not Be Named'. This wizard was supposed to be dead, but Grindelwald had a strong feeling that this was the same person whose resurrection ritual he'd witnessed in a vision long ago. Had anyone bothered to come and ask his advice, he would have even warned them. In exchange for an audience with the new Supreme Mugwump, of course. (Albus being removed from that office was another thing his Sight had shown, but he had yet to find out why. Which was one of the many reasons he would have loved to talk with his nemesis’ successor.) 

His attention was drawn back to the runes. There were two easily distinguishable sets, a baseline built up of Auror-level security spells, and a secondary one enforcing and copying the former, but also adding new, more creative layers to it. In short, an Auror had built up the basics of this rune-line, then the Weasley boys had completed it to an unfortunate perfection. 

He experimented with it, of course. Tried simple spells inside and outside, but he only managed to soak his bed in conjured water, which cleverly did not seep through to the rest of the bedroom. Exhausted, he dried up the evidence of his failed experimenting, then reprimanded himself for never having made the effort to learn wandless magic properly when he was younger. He wouldn't have been trapped 51 years in Nurmengard, if he had simply been able to cast properly without a wand! Perhaps the Elder Wand had made him soft in this respect. 

He went on to examine the bathroom in hopes of finding an escape route there, but there were filters on all of the water outlets, and he wasn't so desperate as to risk losing a leg to a Vanisher. 

Curiously, the mirror wasn't magical, or at least, it didn't seem inclined to voice its criticism or talk back in any other way. Perhaps because the twins had each other for that purpose. 

He returned to the bedroom and let his Sight focus on the seven-child family. Nothing new, but he remembered several old ones. The not-yet-bald dark wizard’s shadow emerging from a small book in the only daughter's hands was peculiar. Whatever that was, she shouldn't have survived it. Unless... Where was that girl during the 'Death Eater' riot? Was she interested in quidditch? Yes, she was, she was a seeker and a chaser prodigy, according to Fred. So, it wouldn't have raised suspicion if she had attended that World Cup final match. But on the other hand, she wasn't even present for the resurrection ritual, and it would have been extremely hard to perform in the absence of a temporarily-possessed host. Either this 'Not To Be Named' was strong on an insane level, or he couldn't even keep a schoolgirl under his control for long enough. Two extremes… Which one was the truth? The fact that she was still alive suggested that 'Not Named' was overrated. Harmful, but far from unbeatable. 

He did not closely examine his concern with ‘No Name.’ Surely it was just to flex his muscles a bit – to demonstrate this idiot’s inadequacy before anyone started comparing him to Gellert and muddying his legacy. Better to find a proper textbook and see about brushing up on wandless spells rather than concern himself with this unspeakably nameless wizard. And so, for the rest of the morning, he tried to occupy himself with reading, periodically summoning new reading material, although the only new information he found was about duelling garments, a few harmless potion ingredients, and wand movements for useless charms. There wasn't a word about preventing exhaustion, and maybe at his age it was inescapable anyway. He was too old to cast wandlessly more than one or two spells before needing a break. 

At around one o'clock, he heard the twins' voices in unison announcing that lunchtime break was due, and they would reopen in an hour. Customers outstaying their welcome would be considered voluntary test subjects for their next inventions – at this announcement, a young boy broke out in glee, but his parents dragged him to the fireplace without mercy, claiming they wouldn't want to have a child reeking of target-following dung bombs. As a reconciliation gift, one of the twins offered him a bomb from their current supplies, leaving it to the child whether he wanted to use it on his mother or father, or maybe save it for a later emergency. 

They both came up to their flat with their wands raised, only to find Gellert peacefully sitting on his bed, an issue of the Seeker Today on his knees. 

“Quidditch fan?” George asked. 

“I am a particular fan of bludgers at the moment,” Gellert said dryly, and the twins burst out laughing. “But which one of you marked the tryout for the Holyhead Harpies?” 

“Oh, Ginny left it here. She will be wanting it back.” 

“I wonder what we should make her do for it?” Fred asked George. 

“I wonder what we should do _to_ it?” 

“Oh, much better question. Perhaps the articles should read themselves out loud?” 

“Singing!” 

“Singing in falsetto?” 

“In harmony?” George suggested. 

“To the tune of Celestina Warbeck songs?” 

“That’s the one!” 

So much energy spent on pranking a sibling. If their focus were ever turned to something else, what might they achieve? Probably more than what ‘Mr. Not Named' had. Ruthlessness was no substitute for intelligence. 

“This is all very fascinating, but I thought you said something about lunch?” Gellert interrupted. They both looked at him as if very surprised to find him there. 

“Yes, lunch. Any requests?” the one with the yes-or-no future asked. 

“Something with both sausages and pineapple!” George instantly replied. 

“May try. You, Greatling?” 

Gellert briefly considered asking them to quit this mockery, but it seemed likely that it would not simply be in vain, but would even serve as encouragement. So instead, he requested, “Fresh news.” 

“No promises made.” 

With that, Fred took a broom and flew out through the window in a quest for lunch, then disillusioned himself above Diagon Alley. George went to refill the stocks, hinting that their morning shift was prosperous. He also mentioned a seller named Verity not being allowed up here for obvious reasons. 

Before George had finished re-stocking, Fred flew in the same window through which he had left. One huge square-shaped box was attached to the landing broom, and on it lay a fresh copy of the Daily Prophet. 

“The sports news is at least accurate, if nothing else is. And Scrimgeour is making a fool of himself. Nothing else is worth a mention.” This disclaimer meant little to a man who had heard nothing from the outside world in decades. Grindelwald eagerly took the British newspaper from Fred, devouring it from the first letter to the last. 

The most enlightening news was learning about the candidates for Minister of Magic – Cornelius Fudge was the current Minister. He was resigning, according to the paper, because of his age. Based on the photo that accompanied the article, it was obvious to Gellert that that was not the real reason. In any case, there ought to have been a number of possibilities, given the information about who supported whom. The most likely candidate (or perhaps simply the candidate the newspaper favoured) was an Auror named Rufus Scrimgeour, but the paper was lacking really spirited arguments in support of or against him. Nobody else seemed to put any effort into seriously challenging him, as if he were the only wizard willing to burden himself with being the next Minister of Magic. 

Nobody wanted the most coveted job in all of Magical Britain. Which, in itself, meant that British magicals were aware of something really bad approaching. 

'He Who Must Not Be Named' still went without a designation, and there were mostly empty promises of soon apprehending him. There was also a person called 'The-Boy-Who-Lived,' who had recently returned to his loving family after the tragic loss of his beloved godfather. That left Grindelwald scratching his head again. 

The only mention of Albus Dumbledore was on the advertisement page: he was looking for yet another Defence Against Dark Arts professor. Albus had become a nobody – a nobody who could not even acquire a teacher to teach his own subject. It was ridiculous and sad at the same time, and slightly humiliating. How had this loser defeated him? 

Gellert’s appreciation of the boys rose a notch, however. They had left him to his reading and placed his share of the pizza on the far side of the bed. No silver plate, but at least there was no mockery either: only two slices of crisp dough with random food elements (including, indeed, sausages and pineapple) thrown into red sauce, served in the lower half of a square-shaped box. 

He briefly wondered how long the boys were planning to keep him, as they had already admitted that they hadn't originally prepared for long-term. They had been planning to hand him over to...? Whom? Knowing their sense of humour, it either had to be the auror who had etched the first runes in the floor here, or it was Albus, because there wasn't a better prank in the world than smuggling his sister's murderer to the headmaster's office. The surprise factor would be colossal for certain. Irritatingly enough, his Sight refused to offer a hint. 

He swallowed large bites, too busy thinking. He had intended to request wizard-worthy food, but that had to be adjourned. With their loud advertising campaign, everyone in Britain had to be aware how many of the twins existed. Them buying food for not two but three people would have raised suspicion in any wizarding restaurants. However, the situation was unlikely to improve once his disappearance from Nurmengard appeared on the front page. 

It would be a glorious day for these pranksters. Surely they would want him to be here when that happened. And honestly, he would prefer to be here too. Now that he considered his chances, having an escape route ready was more important than making an actual escape. He'd be an idiot to let an opportunity like these twins' possible arsenal slip. And where would he go to? He would need a secure place at least until the initial craze quieted down. Here nobody would find him by magical means, since the wards trapped his magic securely inside. 

The orange-coloured version of the breakfast 'soda' tasted little better than the almost black one, tasting almost nothing like the Mediterranean fruit from which it was supposedly derived. He drank it in one go, then returned to his first slice of the pizza. 

When he was full, he lay back on his bed and relaxed. This place would do fine for the foreseeable future, why would he prioritize an escape? 

Even here, half-asleep, he could hear everything that was happening downstairs in the shop. The brothers explaining what the 'delicacies' were good for, a witch about their age teasing them and vice versa, a woman listing the prices of various products and saying a polite, although monotonous thank-you after the buyer had paid, and a boy named Colin bringing in his little brother without adult supervision. 

He heard that the miniature puffskeins were running by the name 'pygmy puff' and one brother's explanation of the use of instant darkness powder gave him fresh ideas, especially when he took into account the Weasleys' love for pyromagics. 

It had been too long since he'd felt this full, and half of his share of the pizza was still on the cardboard box's remains. He wasn't used to so much stimulation and activity after the decades of isolation, his Sight was in a blur, and the noise was getting too much for his old, silence-accustomed ears. The bed was very comfortable, although a far cry from what he would have preferred, too simple, too cheap. But then, the entire place wasn't quite luxurious: he remembered the empty bathroom corner where a tub was meant to be placed someday. 

He knew he'd finally succumbed to sleep when the shadows took the shape of a familiar old man in front of him. The newcomer had a particularly strange face with his brown eyes sitting a good inch above where they should have been, and white facial hair hiding his mouth. 

A man who had never in reality lived long enough to grow old. 

“Why are you so adamant on embodying my conscience?” 

“Somebody has to,” the strange old man said. Being American-raised, he had always spoken in English – Grindelwald considered that he might attribute his continued fluency in a language that was far from his first to this phantom. Certainly it was not to be taken for granted, after fifty-one years of silence. 

“What dedication you show.”

“I recall the time you pleaded with me to stay.” The strange-faced man leant closer, so that his lips were a hair's width from Grindelwald's left ear. “Because I was all you had.” 

“Take a seat, my conscience. I'd offer you a slice of pizza, but you no longer need mortal food.” 

Those deep brown eyes all but pierced him, then they turned sad, disappointed and betrayed. He didn't reply. 

“Why did you come all this way for me?” Gellert asked. 

“Because I'm your conscience, and you might need a reminder I'm still around.” 

“You’re just a phantom.” 

“No, I'm an obscurial,” the visitor said, vanishing into the darkness. 

“Come BACK!” Grindelwald demanded, sitting up, once again alone. 


	4. 04 - Gellert Grindelwald

The sun was just setting above the rooftops of London, the shop downstairs still busy with customers. Gellert idly wondered if these runic wards would keep a full-blown Obscurus inside, but there was no trace of his visitor anywhere. He knew for a fact that no one could have broken out of his cell at Nurmengard, not even this sole visitor. Once magic had been confined in there, that was exactly what it was – confined. 

He visited the bathroom with intestines long unaccustomed to real food. After some consideration, he then emptied what remained of the orange-coloured drink and started transfiguring the light, translucent bottle into a drinking glass. It was a clear display of how clumsy he was without his Wand: the object's rim was wavy and the material was a mosaic of real glass and the original, malleable muggle stuff, and it had undignified bright spots ranging from almost red to sunflower yellow. He filled it with tap water, then returned to his leftover slice of pizza. 

He cast a wandless warming spell on his meal, the same spell that had kept him from freezing during the harsh winter months. His body was grateful for the real food, as if every bite that went down his throat would return life to him. He was overtaken by an old memory... He'd been out at sea with his classmates, trying to save the Durmstrang ship from a horde of short-snout dragons half a day's ride from the last inhabited island. Eventually they had had to give up the shattered and torched middle third of the vessel and he had exhausted himself fusing the front and the back; he had come around to a blonde Norwegian witch forcing large gulps of potions down his throat. These bits of dry bread with the pineapple-sausage combination on top somehow reminded him of the healing potions; their effects were surprisingly similar. 

He looked down at his old hands, then out to the pale sunset skies. Had he not spent almost half his life imprisoned, would he have settled down by now? Would he be content, sitting on a bed at the age of 113, or would he be travelling, chasing whatever glory that was still there to be conquered? He grimaced at his weakened body that wouldn't travel anywhere in the foreseeable future. Then, abandoning the last bites, he continued examining the runic line. 

So far it seemed like he'd traded one prison for another. Life here was more eventful, certainly, but the accessible area was even smaller than in his previous place. Still, he would have agreed to the swap, had he not been forcefully abducted, glued to an ungovernable broom. The potential he'd seen in the twins was tempting, and he had a better chance to get away from this place. 

He found a brief article in the Daily Prophet that had been written in runic letters. Perhaps slicing that page apart, he could gain a few runes that, properly positioned, would disrupt the wards just enough for him to slip through. The printed runes would be easy to hide under his bedsheet, so that they would be convenient – he could keep his escape route ready, without giving up the relative comfort and safety of staying for a while. 

He checked the line again, starting from the wall by Fred's bed, and started to compile a mental list of which runes would be needed and where. The middle of the room was excellently warded, but he found a possible gap he could exploit near the bathroom door. 

Then he gawked at the last runes between the bathroom door and the adjoining door to the twins' well warded workshop. It was actually the same line! The rune line that started at the far wall of the dormitory did not end at the bathroom, but continued _into_ the workshop! Gellert squeezed against the wall, trying to stay within the line. His toes touched the line at one point, which stung a little, but then there he was! In the workshop! 

It was an amazing place. On his side were the raw materials: long shelves filled with folded clothes, potion ingredients, and presumably muggle-made items he didn't bother trying to understand. Then there was a two-seat workbench, a potioneer set (with no less than five different cauldrons, but not a single preparation knife) and a box full of firework prototypes. It was clear why the runic line was needed in the room: items apparently got charred in here on a regular basis. There was a rune-covered floorboard, currently leaning in a corner, that matched a hole between the base material shelves and the double workbench. On the other side, a similar floorboard positioned between the same bench and the finished goods' shelves. Clearly, with the runes in place all the time, the explosives couldn't be removed from the warded zone. But these lifeless dangerous items must eventually leave the secured area somehow, and if _they_ could, then perhaps a defeated dark wizard could as well. His gaze settled on second floorboard. 

The board was ridiculously easy to move, it didn't even need lifting; he could kick it aside with his bare toes. When he stepped out to the middle of the room, it felt like his heart was beating in his throat. Careful not to reveal his escape route, he positioned the floorboard back in place, as if quietly closing the door behind himself. 

He weighed his options, now that he finally had found his exit. He could flee, wandless and even without shoes, and never be ridiculed again. Or he could endure being mocked, being called 'Greatling,' in exchange for news, food, and shelter. 

There were many aspects to consider. Now he was weak, but nobody was searching for him so far. He had his escape route for emergencies. The local aurors were kept busy by the Death Eater club, which could also mean that they were kept on their toes and monitoring any suspicious activity. Knowing Albus, the same applied to him, and he must be trying to contain 'Not To Be Named' from behind the scenes, at least until school started in September. He would need to wait almost two months, make his move when Albus would be up to his eyeballs with the new semester. 

From the workshop, he found a door to the attic, but after a quick glimpse he decided it would take a whole day to properly check out. Instead he went to sit in the window that had an active one-way-vision charm despite now being wide open. He climbed up onto the sill and dangled his legs outside, enjoying the last rays of the sun. Under his feet was the famous Diagon Alley, a busy river of witches and wizards. He recognized the local Gringotts branch. There was a bookshop as well, together with several apothecaries, an ice cream parlour, two tailors, a broom seller... And many, many magicals crowded in this one confined street. 

Would they have the common sense not to panic, if anything scared them? Unlikely. Many would attempt disapparating directly from the crowd, which would mean they'd be touching another magical as they left, unintentionally taking them along... and it would cause several cases of splinching as an obvious consequence. The localized chaos alone would, in a matter of minutes, occupy half of their Ministry and most of the Healers in Britain. Lulling people into a false sense of security was the worst response to the supposed threat of the Death Munchers – many would be caught unprepared and would disapparate without taking the obvious precautions. 

Could he maybe use this to his advantage? He willed his Sight to show a glimpse of the sun-warmed Alley's future, eager for new ideas. 

Instead of a reassuring sight of chaos, it showed a future where bounty hunters and wands for hire were patrolling the street, hungry for the money on his head and thirsty for his blood, while he was still without a wand. Hastily he climbed back to the dormitory and crossed the runic line to his bed. There was no point in drawing attention to his hiding place while he was still unarmed. 

He didn't even think about escaping for the rest of the evening. 

The next morning passed in much the same way: he woke at an hour that felt to him to be brutally early, but then, with his stomach full, he fell back asleep. His last thought before giving in to the slumber was that maybe he'd been drugged. The twins had the means to do just that. And if a wizard was already asleep, cursing him further was easy and met little resistance. 

“You should know,” a treacherous little voice whispered in the back of his mind. His mind was too sluggish to reply. Grindelwald would've sworn he heard a disproportionately large white beard being rubbed, although his visitor was nowhere to be seen. Or he just tried too well not to face his own conscience, although the phenomenon couldn't be entirely ignored. 

He willed himself awake. 

It was still morning – this unplanned nap couldn't have taken longer than an hour. Fred was away, George was in the workshop. With now practiced ease, he skipped from the edge of the runic line to that of the workroom's, then slipped in, carefully staying between the ingredient shelves and the runic line. The Weasley boy was too busy to look up, casting protective spells on a witch's pointy hat. 

“When you're amassing magic, it's easier to do so with both hands. You struggle because your left is inert,” the old wizard observed quietly. “You cast off balance.” 

George blinked up, and when he realized Grindelwald was in the workshop's half-warded airspace, he fell back with a yelp, chair and all. Grumbling, he stood up, wand trained at the one who shouldn't have been here. 

Grindelwald lifted his old hands, in the universal sign of intending no harm. 

“How did you get in here?” George demanded to be told. 

“The runic ward line continues here. Same area as my share of the dormitory. We're still safe.” 

“Just for the record, I'm not comfortable with you in our workshop,” George said, now steadying himself. With a wave of his wand, he set the workbench's chair back up, but he didn't sit back down. He looked wary, but that seemed easily remedied. Gellert wouldn’t have risked entering the workshop at all if he didn’t have a plan. 

“You and Fred saved me. You treat me like I was worthy of human company, you bring joy to a soul that's been burnt up and left charred for over half a century. And you're well aware of that.” 

George shook his head. “You could escape, but you don't, and you tell me it's because you enjoy our company?” 

“Where would I go?” he asked in a sarcastic tone, as if he hadn’t spent an afternoon debating with himself. “Of course, there's always my ancestral castle in the Alps, now with a brand new window in it.” At this point George fought back a proud smile. “There’s no wizard left in the world who doesn't hate me besides the two of you.” 

“And Professor Dumbledore.” 

The discussion came to an unplanned halt here, with neither wizard questioning the other's argument. After a minute of uncomfortable silence, the old criminal repeated, “When you're amassing magic, for the purpose of shielding that hat, for instance, it's better to do so with both hands. Mirror the wand hand's movement, let magic flow through your entire body. The spell will hold stronger.” 

George placed the hat he'd been working on back on the workbench, lifted up his left arm, and practiced the move without actual spellcasting for a few times. Then he put on the strongest shield he'd ever managed. The hat was glowing red and blue at the same time for a moment before the magic sank into the black fabric and fused with it. 

“Cool. Why didn't they teach us in school?” 

“If you screw it up, it does over double the harm a one-handed wave of a wand would. I only recommended it because you can already cast the same spell with perfect ease.” 

“Thanks.” 

“I no longer look like it, but a hundred years ago even I started as a very clumsy caster.” 

“Harry told us the same. That all great wizards started once somewhere. Then he sent us practicing battle spells.” With a wave of his wand he flipped the hat over to one of the shelves and reached for a new one. 

“Spell it against magical motion,” Grindelwald suggested. Or instructed. He tried not to make it sound like an order. 

“What?” 

“What use is a magical protective object if it can be levitated off the wearer’s head? If the opponent recognizes the hat for what it is, they can just summon or banish it. Do you know how to cast a resistance charm?” 

“Yes, but it should have been put on before the last shield.” 

“Correct. Remember that when you spell the next one.” 

“Yes, Sir Greatling. I'll do exactly as you command.” 

Back to the mocking, Grindelwald inwardly groaned. He supposed responding with good-humored groveling would ease the constant taunting, but he'd lived his entire life with dignity, and he wasn't ready to sink to the level of two Hogwarts washouts. 

George took a new hat off the shelf and set it on his head at a saucy angle. He stood in front of the mirror, turning his head and admiring himself. “Fred was right! This hat would improve anyone’s looks, even someone as good looking as myself.” He took a second unspelled hat, made a quick gesture over it, and floated it over onto Grindelwald’s head. “Oh yes, a _great_ improvement.” 

He supposed it was an improvement over for what passed for hair on his head these days. Nonetheless, he removed the hat from his head. He was nearly certain he would be able to return it to the shelf – he had been practicing that spell - but he did not want to risk failing in front of the twin, so he set the hat at his feet. George floated a stool his way, and Gellert spent the rest of the morning watching George work and offering suggestions. It might have been an almost tolerable way to spend the days of waiting before he could successfully leave the apartment, if it weren’t for the constant stream of indignities the twin subjected him to. Though Gellert couldn’t help but be impressed by George’s ability to tease and pull pranks at the same time as casting such powerful and complex spells. He might even have found George amusing if his only target was anybody else. 

The sun was high in the sky when Fred came speeding through the window on his broom, coming to a sudden, yet somehow graceful stop beside the workbench, not damaging a single one of the several boxes and bags attached to his broom. The yes-or-no vibration in his future was more prominent than it had ever been before. 

He glanced at Gellert but seemingly decided that his presence was not worth commenting on, before turning to his brother to announce, “Amelia Bones is dead.” 

“WHAT?!” 

“Her muggle neighbors saw spells flying and called whatever they have for aurors. She was apparently trapped after she got home and locked the door from the inside. Mad-Eye says it must have been You-Know-Who himself.” 

“But… But she was careful! And a brilliant spellcaster!” 

“Yes, and her brilliant spellcasting alerted the neighbourhood, filled with muggles who could obviously do nothing, much less understand what was happening. She was alone! But Mad-Eye insists, 'Had there been more of us, we'd now be grieving more.’ Kingsley is staying with Emmeline and Susan.” 

After a moment of silence, when acceptance finally replaced denial, George whispered, “We should re-join the roster for patrols. We knew something was in the making, we should have…” 

“…gotten yourselves killed alongside her?” Grindelwald quietly offered. 

“We cannot baby-sit you when the Head of the Department for Magical Law Enforcement gets killed in her own home!” Fred yelled back. 

Oh, so she wasn't some random casualty. “If the Aurors' Highest Commander was murdered, that's war in anyone’s book,” he pointed out. 

“Yes, it is, but Fudge continues to refuse to accept the obvious. We have wasted an entire year while the Death Eaters were preparing for war, and those of us who noticed were kept busy protecting our own people from a crazy undersecretary.” 

“The Ministry is its own worst enemy,” the no-vibration boy continued. “Same time last year, Umbitch set two dementors lose on Harry and they almost Kissed him! And then she had the nerve to prosecute our little not-brother for self-defence in the presence of his muggle cousin!” 

“I was never one to agree with our secrecy…” but his muttered reminder was ignored. Instead, the duo continued listing for him all the atrocities their father, a small-time Ministry worker, had to endure day after day, working in that gathering place of assorted enemies. 

He listened to their ranting for many long minutes, noting that Dumbledore's name was only mentioned in the context of not being there and (on one occasion) arriving too late. They weren't blaming him yet, but there was an opening. Not that he would point this out just now. “What happened to the undersecretary with the dementors?” he queried instead. 

“Centaurs happened,” both twins replied with identical, vindictive grins. 

“And a giant named Grawp,” Fred added. 

“Not exactly dementor-level punishment, but good enough,” continued George. 

‘Good enough’?! Was it good enough that she wasn't even tried for attempted murder? These boys' expectations of law enforcement were low! But then, he wasn't about to complain when their attitude had allowed them to break him out of Nurmengard. 

When they returned to the bedroom to eat, Gellert quietly sat down on his bed, back against the headboard, and his legs stretched out before him. He was still unaccustomed to holding up a conversation for long, and his legs were aching from balancing on the stool, especially his right knee. His back was not much better. He was a sorry excuse for a wizard, a pale shade of the powerful leader he used to be. 

The yes-or-no twin sat heavily with his brother on his brother’s bed. He said nothing as he tossed Gellert’s meal at him – another paper-wrapped abomination. Did muggles not use silverware? Given the current political climate, such questions were better not asked. 

There was no mockery as they ate, which suited Gellert, but neither was there any chatter, any jokes. The twins’ mood had shifted, and he did not know what this would mean for him. There was plenty of silence in which to contemplate the possibilities. 

“I still say we should sign up again,” was the first thing Fred said, examining the light and slightly bendy bottle his soda had come in. 

“If you want to contribute to the war effort, do what you're the best at,” Grindelwald suggested. “Arm your people. Equip them with your inventions. Give them some means of an escape, so that they don't get trapped in their own homes.” 

There was silence again. 

“Well, those hats George wasted breakfast-time on…” Fred began, “They were inspired by that git of a Rosier. You know, he was picking on Alicia at Platform 9 ¾ at the beginning of the school year, and he threatened to jinx her mother. It was Alicia's idea really… we made the first hat for her mom. When she was picking up Alicia for Christmas, that jerk cast a Tarantallegra on her, and it SPECTACULARLY backfired…” 

“Without her mom even looking.” 

“Of course, like all of our brilliant ideas, it took off and by Easter we had sold at least twenty.” 

“First and second year Hufflepuffs bought up the most.” 

Swallowing back a million questions, Gellert forced out, “A first line of defence could make the difference between life and death. But make it stand out less. Something a wizard would wear even at home…” 

“Slippers!” the twins yelled in unison. 

“Those aren't what I mea…” 

“Or pyjamas!” 

“Underpants!” 

“And how do you protect very small children? Protego-infused baby nappies!” 

Gellert sighed inwardly. The twins were irrepressible and energetic, he could give them that, but their rapid-fire thinking led them to miss obvious problems, such as their failure to ward their otherwise clever hats against a simple Accio. Though underpants were not a terrible idea. Or socks. His eyes drifted to his still bare feet. The twins hadn’t thought to give him socks and he refused to ask. Their exaggerated magnanimity over the odd muggle food they insisted on providing was insulting enough without having to beg to be fully clothed. 

The twins disappeared after lunch, saying that they were heading down to the shop. Gellert practiced his wandless casting. Levitating selected books off the shelf and returning them was no longer a challenge, but he was having difficulty improving upon his transfiguration. He cancelled the spell on his drinking glass and tried remaking it a couple of times, before it lost its plasticity and became impossible to work with. He took another bottle out of the rubbish bin and tried again. It was slightly better. The edge was perhaps more even, less wavy. However, the light muggle-glass as a whole was still an unappealing pastiche of materials. 

That was enough transfiguration for the day. He decided to move on the charms. He went into the bathroom, disrobed, and got into the shower. He gathered his magic as well as he could – why was everything so effortful? – and attempted an aguamenti. This time, at least, the spell would not soak anything that was not meant to be soaked! But the preparation had been unnecessary; the water that he had managed to conjure was not enough to fill a glass. Perhaps he had spent too much energy already? The thought irritated him. People used to cower before him, but wandlessly he couldn’t even perform spells that every fourteen-year-old wizard had mastered. Well, as long as he was here, he might as well take advantage. He had gone many decades without hot running water, much less a seemingly endless supply. When he left here, it might be some time before he had access to a hot shower again. 

Gellert spent part of the afternoon exploring the workshop, familiarizing himself with the twins’ finished products, but he made sure to be back in the room well before the time that the young men were due to return. It would not do to antagonize them, especially today, when they were on edge from the assassination of that Ministry official. He practiced his wandless magic by cleaning the bathroom and tidying up the room, doing a passable job. Then he sat on his bed with a transfiguration textbook, waiting for the twins to come back. 

The manner of their return was unexpected. He was sitting facing the bedroom door, and so saw George as he approached with the square boxes that Gellert had learned contained pizza. “Dinner!” George called out – and Gellert was hit from the side with a spell, immobilizing him. It was immediately clear what had happened. George had served as a distraction, while Fred had come in through the workshop window, flanking Gellert. 

Gellert was annoyed that he had not seen it coming, not that there was much that he could have done about it if he had anticipated the attack. What were they planning for him now? Were they taking him somewhere else? Had they decided that he was holding them back? “We can’t babysit you,” the yes-or-no twin had said. Gellert had seen the danger of that thinking right away, but they had become so excited about possible variations on protective wizarding clothing, he had hoped that he had adequately redirected them. 

“Your Great-wonderfulness,” George began, “we cannot have you –“ 

“Wandering off through the workshop –“ 

“And out into London.” 

Fred mumbled a remarkably long incantation while pointing his wand at Gellert. It must have been a spell they had designed – Gellert did not recognize it. His skin felt prickly, then itchy, then ticklish all over. He could not move his head, but he could move his eyes to see his hands. They were now completely covered in white fur. How much of him was covered in fur? All of him, by the feel of his skin. 

George grinned and said, “We are going to have to start calling you Great-gorgeousness. The fur really brings out your eyes. I almost think that there is no improving on such a spell, but it seems only fair that I contribute in some way –“ He waved his wand in a complicated motion and glitter started spraying from his hairy hands, pink and silver and gold and orange and purple and green. If Gellert had been able to move, he would have been trembling with rage. 

“Very nice, Forge.“ 

“Naturally, Gred. We are, after all, quite talented.” 

“And good looking.” 

“And musical.” 

Fred waved his wand as if conducting an orchestra, and Gellert’s clothes began loudly singing in something approaching harmony. 

Don’t be a grumpy hippogriff!  
Hippeehiiiigh Behippeepifff!  
Don’t be a grumpy hippogriff!  
You can fly way up high in the sky – hippeehigh!

No, don’t be a grabby grindylow!  
Lowleeloooooow! Leelowleeloooow!   
Don’t be a grabby grindylow!  
Her or him, you can swim, don’t be grim – lowleelow! 

Don’t be a floppy flobberworm!  
Flippyflaaaaail – 

“We wanted you to see,” Fred shouted over the din, “what will happen if you abuse our hospitality in any way, whether by trying to escape, or by trying to harm us or any of our guests, or in any other way. This spell is active at all times, but –“ 

George waved his wand and the ‘music’ was silenced, the glitter disappeared, and Gellert’s skin was back to normal, all at once. 

“But,” George finished for Fred, “as long as you behave yourself, you are under our protection, and the spell will be inert.” 

Fred removed the body-bind, but Gellert didn’t move. He didn’t want to give them the pleasure of a reaction. That humiliation was going on the twins’ account – it was becoming quite a long list. Still, what they had done to Gellert was clever. There was no way that he could escape now. Or, at least, with this series of spells, they had increased the difficulty of escape dramatically. His respect for them was growing. It seemed that their pranks were not a waste of their talents after all. 

“Very well,” Gellert said to the twins, who were clearly waiting for his reaction. “I see that you brought pizza again?” 


	5. 05 - Albus Dumbledore

Hogwarts was so quiet without the students. According to Severus, blessedly so. Hogwarts was also without a DADA teacher - again, blessedly so, given that the alternative was dear Dolores returning. It looked like there would be no volunteers this year.

Fawkes chirped on his perch, still a young bird after getting in the line of hostile spellfire only three weeks before. Beautiful, reckless, protective bird. Dumbledore offered his hand to the half-size Fawkes, and the young phoenix happily jumped on and, with the trademark side-stepping common to tree dwellers, made his way up to his wizard's shoulder. He rubbed a thyme-scented beak against his cheek, then started nipping his earlobe.

"You know, Fawkes, I sometimes wish I could bring something – anything - back from the Pensieve. A broken vial, if nothing more."

With a sigh he continued: "Harry broke his two-way mirror in disappointment. I'm not sure I have the right to offer to repair it. You would do that in my shoes, wouldn't you? It's the only object connecting him to both his father and Sirius. Hey, stop chewing my oculars!"

Fawkes was so destructive at this age. Albus was counting the days until he was an adult phoenix again. It wrecked the illusion of Fawkes as a wise and compassionate listener if he was tearing something apart while Albus was confiding in him.

He called for an elf: an early dinner would at least be a temporary reprieve from the task before him. The Pensieve. He couldn't help but torture himself with it, always beginning by revisiting a memory or two from that one summer so long ago, before finally viewing whichever memory had been the impetus for bringing out the Pensieve in the first place. No, not self-torture. It was a caution. No matter how many times he relived a memory, he would always find something he had missed – something he should have seen.

But even after a light meal, he still lacked the courage to face the events more than ninety years behind him, so instead he entered his memory of the night he found Harry sitting in front of the Mirror of Erised. To Harry, that deceptive mirror was showing as much as he could remember of his family, the gaps were filled out with the vague mist of uncertainty. Albus, however, could clearly see what he desired – even knew that what he wanted was to some extent within reach. What he had told Harry was true: he _had_ seen 'himself and a pair of warm, woolen socks'. What he didn't tell the young boy was the context: an old man, barefoot, looking back at him, then grudgingly accepting those socks from his hands.

It was respect, Albus told himself – not burdening Harry with his own trivial desires when the boy was risking being caught, using the Cloak of Invisibility to sneak to the mirror, just so that he could at least catch a glimpse of what his long-dead parents had looked like. Fate had taken away even the godfather who couldn't keep himself out of trouble, nor out of the liquor cabinet for that matter. He never could have taken care of a young boy, and yet he had been all Harry had had.

No, it hadn't been respect, but shame. Harry's greatest desire was family, love, feeling cared for. Albus' was to visit a mass murderer. He had been fighting this desire for decades, and would continue to fight it. He shouldn't want to see Gellert. Certainly, neither of them deserved any such comfort – if it would even be a comfort. If Albus didn't deserve comfort, Harry, by contrast, certainly didn't deserve all that he had suffered already – everything he wanted was no less than any child deserved, and yet it was nothing he could ever have.

Now that sense of shame doubled, considering what might need to be done. That blasted prophecy! '...neither can live while the other survives'. Harry was like a grandchild of his. He was responsible for him, he cared for him. And yet - what could be done, if his 'multiple horcruxes' theory was proven?

There was nothing to be done right now, but to thoroughly check every possible hiding place where another horcrux could have remained hidden. Voldemort was untrusting; he wouldn't have left another valued piece of his own soul with a follower. Lucius was an idiot, but harmless when it came to really dark magic. A maniac like Augustus Rookwood would have been capable of keeping an object safe, but would have surely had a field day testing the effect of an Imperius cast on a defenceless soul shard of the powerful wizard.

The one credible possibility was the Lestrange family. But Lestrange Manor had been taken apart by enraged aurors when they had found out what had befallen the Longbottom couple. If anything had been there, it would have been found. Unless somebody had cast a Fiendfyre during the capture? He'd need to call in a favour and read through the reports, but not even then would he know for sure whether or not a horcrux had been there at some point.

The headmaster rubbed his temple; his head was aching with too many thoughts. Voldemort had supporters to host him, but no base of operations that he could have called his own hiding spot. Although, Harry had told him of visions during the previous year – visions of Barty Crouch and Voldemort talking in the Riddle family estate. He, Barty, and the traitor Pettigrew. Living proof that even the Sorting Hat can be fooled, and the feat doesn't even take an excellent wizard. Pettigrew should have never been allowed near Gryffindor.

So – the Riddle estate. And possibly his mother's family home, even though it didn't appear like a house worthy of a mention. He sank into the memories, some of his own, and some gathered during these past weeks, hoping to find a clue to where to search first. Gryffindor's sword was already placed on his desk, now imbued with basilisk venom, in addition to the many potions it had been introduced to over a millennium.

He sank into a rural landscape with a long-abandoned house on the hill, 'accompanied' by a group of muggle policemen. He paid more attention to his surroundings than he had the first time after he'd acquired the memory, looking for likely places where a Riddle family heirloom could have been hidden. He was about to follow the officers to the front garden, when, with a loud pop, a house elf dressed in nothing but several shining necklaces, wristbands and ankle bracelets appeared right in front of him.

"Supreme Mugwump Ferris Soleil is demanding Albus Dumbledore's immediate presence," she stated, leaving no doubt that she'd go as far as to drag the old wizard to her master if that's needed.

"Then I shall talk to dear Ferris," Dumbledore sighed, straightening his back as he lifted his head out of the swirl of cloudy memories.

The elf, now standing on the edge of the Pensieve, countered, "Supreme Mugwump is wanting Dumbledore in person and with no delay."

What could this be? "Did something happen?"

"Things is happening always. Dumbledore is turning his back and failing to notice too often!" the visitor criticized.

"You sound too much like your master," Dumbledore sighed, straightening a wrinkle on his robe. Then, reluctantly, he offered his hand to the elf, who grabbed it and immediately apparated them away.

The office they'd landed in no way resembled how it had appeared when he'd left it. The walls were bright yellow, providing a stark contrast to the matte red furnishings. The shelves full of books and journals had a blue-glowing block on them, so that only the current Supreme Mugwump would be able to access them. There was nothing but a lonely inkwell on the large table. The portraits had been removed: some had been rolled up and stored away, some had been taken home by his subordinates.

Ferris Soleil was never more pleasant company than his elf – still, that threatening glare wasn't something Dumbledore was accustomed to.

"You claim to have battled that British terrorist of yours on the 18th," he started without a preamble.

"Yes, dear Ferris. It's nice to see you. Well, the British Ministry of Magic confirmed it was him, alive and active. Several of his followers were also seen to fight alongside him, some of whom are now in Azkaban and available for interrogation."

"Pureblood followers of old ideals," the new Supreme Mugwump nodded. "But are you sure it was him?"

"Who else could have it been, if not Voldemort?"

"Someone else these purebloods of yours are willing to follow, under the disguise of that long-dead boogeyman."

"Nonsense!" Albus Dumbledore declared. He cast one longing look at the armchair that had once been his, then sat on the tabletop. He could see his victorious rival's head swelling as if he was ready to explode. "Who else would have been so desperate to get his hands on a prophecy that's about him and Harry Potter?"

"Who would have been desperate to present this terrorist as still the main concern?" Soleil asked back. "You had your own people guarding that area. Those were your so-called witnesses."

"Even the resigning Minister of Magic saw Voldemort there!"

"One brief moment," the new Supreme Mugwump nodded. His oddly decorated house elf disapparated with a clatter of her jewelry.

"Why are you so much bent on opposing my statement, Ferris? Do you think that if, unexpectedly, Voldemort were proven to be nonexistent, your power base here would be solidified?"

For the first time this afternoon Ferris Soleil looked truly distraught. "Do you honestly think this about me?" he asked in a much more reserved voice.

The former and the current Supreme Mugwumps gazed at each other for a second, then Ferris took out an envelope from the drawer in his table. Without another word spoken, he took two photographs out and handed both to his predecessor.

The first one was some sort of a castle ruin, and the second was a close-up of a partially collapsed wall with a steady stream of water seeping out through the lowest cracks. It was rustic; would have been poetic or beautiful, if not for the plain darkness of the broken wall. He went back to examining the first picture.

Normal wizarding photographs had a fixed point of view with the object moving. This time, the object was solid, but the viewpoint was moving; perhaps the camera had been trusted to a gryphon or something equally large and flight-capable.

A grim dark fortress, surrounded by still-snowy peaks; a single black tower with a narrow window still intact; lonely, distant and secluded, just like…

Just like…

"Do you recognize it?"

He nodded, unable to say a word.

"There are ongoing investigations, but so far we don't have a clue of what happened," admitted Ferris. "There was no earthquake. No apparition or disapparition in the range of any sensors. The muggle authorities reported nothing unusual. The last magic we detected was a wandlessly performed shaving charm once a month. In fact that's how one of the monitors noticed something was amiss: there was no shaving spell performed at the expected time."

Finally, the old wizard managed to ask with a constricted throat, "When were these pictures taken?"

"What do you take me for, Albus Dumbledore?! I called for you immediately after I sent the investigation team out! One hour ago! How long did you prefer sitting on a problem before taking action?"

Dumbledore ignored the insult, continuing to puzzle over the photographs and all that they might imply.

"When was the last time the wandless shaving charm was recorded?"

"The 14th of June."

Albus quietly slipped into a chair from the tabletop he had been occupying.

"And… you don't think there'd be anyone under the ruins."

"No. Whatever he did, it seems like he's done it alone. This is your area of expertise, but shaving spells are a specified form of vanishing, right? Do you think he found a way to, I don't know, un-specify some of them? Fool us into mistaking those for vanity spells while he cut a new exit into the stone?"

"Not without his former wand, which I carry with myself," Dumbledore replied.

"Souvenir from Berlin?"

"It's a bit more complicated, but yes. And I think Grindelwald would have tried to get it back from me."

"So, you're still sure it was that domestic terrorist of yours whom you dueled on the 18th?"

He didn't immediately reply. Of course, he would say he was certain, but what was the truth? He second-guessed himself for a moment, but reviewing the evidence, he stood by his earlier confident assertion. Voldemort had conjured a fiendfyre venomous snake; Gellert would have used a variety of different spells, and even if it's fiendfyre, his chosen shape would have been a Swedish short-snout dragon. Furthermore, it was Tom - not Grindelwald – whose soul was fused to Harry's, and the boy knew his enemy well enough by now that he would have noticed the difference himself.

"It was Voldemort. If you are open to considering a suggestion, you might contact Durmstrang. It is possible they could provide you with a lead. That's what I would do."

Ferris Soleil was about to point out the well-known fact that Durmstrang had no interest in any association with their former student, but his house elf returned, her ears flapping.

"Chief Investigator Moreau is finding the long series of storms from July one to thirteen. Moreau is saying the escape was during or before July one and eight. Deep rain water in the cell!"

"Are you sure that wasn't just conjured there?" Ferris asked.

The elf shook her head, her many necklaces ringing and clattering as she spoke, "Is not conjured, is not spelled. Not water, not stone, not anything!" Immediately after, she added, "Minister of Magical Czechoslovakia and united Muggle Czech Republic and Slovakia is call." With that, she disappeared.

"At least you have a very talented elf," Dumbledore noted.

"She's good at her job," Soleil replied. "Jealous?"

"No."

"You should be."

Almost immediately the elf returned. The sheet of parchment she was carrying had been written in reddish black ink and had a dark blue arrowhead against a white and red circle in the upper left corner. In the upper right corner, it had a red coat of arms depicting three wands crossing each other. Albus always found it intriguing how the two muggle states shouted abuse at each other despite their long-intertwined magical history.

The current Supreme Mugwump read the official letter, then passed it to the former one. Then he gave some quiet orders to the elf, of which Dumbledore didn't hear a word. He was focused on what the Czechoslovakian minister of magic wrote.

There were two unidentified border crossings on the 2nd of July, both of which had initially been written off as tourists flying over the landscape on brooms. At 19:35 local time, three riders entered the country from the direction of Austria, then three riders left at 19:57, crossing into Magical Germany. At the time there was no reason to monitor them more closely.

"Heading North," Ferris finally admitted. "You might be right about Durmstrang, after all."

"They wouldn't want him there, but there's nowhere else that he would be welcome, either. At least Durmstrang would be familiar to him."

The two Supreme Mugwumps looked at each other, then the current one asked if Dumbledore wanted coffee.

They sat in an uncomfortable silence, answering floo calls and unwrapping portraits in the corridor while the bejeweled elf was running errands internationally.

About half an hour later, right after both Denmark and Poland had asserted that they registered no travellers that night, the vice executive officer of Durmstrang reported back that, after hearing about Voldemort's confirmed return, Headmaster Karkaroff had hastily packed his things and waved them all good-bye.

"Perfect timing," the younger Supreme Mugwump seethed.

"I'm inclined to agree," the older one concurred. Just as this meeting had been perfectly timed to distract him from his hunt for the horcruxes. If it had not been for Gellert's escape, he might have already finished searching both Riddle manor and the Gaunt shack. But then Gellert always had managed to insinuate himself into Albus' life at the worst time possible

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because of some Real Life events going on, further chapters might take us somewhat longer to complete. Don't worry, we'll get to them eventually. Comments are welcome!


	6. 06 - Gellert Grindelwald

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're back! Thanks for hanging in there!

It had been only a matter of time, so Gellert wasn't surprised when one morning George dropped a fresh copy of _The Daily Prophet_ on his bed, and the editorial read: 'ICW: We're one dark wizard short!’

It was the 3rd of August, so the announcement was late by an entire month, and even now, it was surprisingly vague. There was no mention of Nurmengard having a hole in the topmost cell, nor did they write about him having been absent since early July. To the unsuspecting British wizards, the story might offer false hope that the International Conference was finally taking note of No Name's intense preparations for a takeover, but that assumption couldn't have been further from the truth.

The international organization had 'lost sight of a wizard the aurors had been monitoring closely,’ or so the newspaper wrote. That certainly hadn’t been true from the perspective of physical proximity – before the twins had appeared, Gellert had not seen another human being for… he couldn’t say for certain. Two years, at least. Gellert had assumed that he had in fact been ‘monitored closely’ in the other sense of the word, but he wondered now – how long had it taken them to find out that his cell was empty? Had the ICW known he was missing that first night, and hidden it from the public out of a hubristic certainty that they would find him quickly? Or did the timing of this announcement signify that they had only now discovered that he was no longer in their custody?  
  
'Any report of uncontrolled dark activity in any wizarding state is to be reported to its magical government,’ meant that they didn't even have the faintest idea which country he'd been hiding in. And the refusal to say _which_ wizard was meant was cynical – the only purpose Gellert could see for it was to protect the careers of those who had been so slipshod as to allow for his escape. ‘A wizard… any report…’ The alarmist tone combined with the lack of any factual content was sure to lead to more hysteria than the loss of one particular centenarian wizard who (Gellert was growing to accept, with no little chagrin) almost no one remembered.

George summed up the article: “If you find a trace of dark magic, report it. If you notice muggles disappearing or dying, report it. If you stumble across a dark wizard roughly resembling anyone you dislike, report it.”

“This will escalate quickly,” Fred said. “On the other hand, I can't imagine it'll be a nice time to be a Death Eater.”

Grindelwald blinked at the boy with the contrasting future. “Think about how much the tabloids would love to hear that you've been keeping me on muggle food all this time.”

“That, Your Great-Goodness, is your reward for your well-known appreciation of muggles!” the twins replied in unison.

He only nodded, suppressing a cringe. The twins _did_ know _something_ about him and had determined that this was what he deserved. There was not one witch or wizard alive who would disagree – even Gellert could not disagree. It was a fitting indignity: they could have either fed him properly or could have let him starve, but muggle food was a punishment he couldn't endure with head held high. Though the nature of the food – the paper wrappers, the lack of silverware, the unnatural flavours and colours, the greasiness that lingered on the roof of his mouth – was counterproductive to any program of convincing him that muggles were _not_ barbarians.

But Fred and George were eating the same foods and did not seem to see it as a punishment. And Gellert _was_ getting stronger – magically and physically – it was becoming more difficult to worry that the origin of his food would negatively impact his magical recovery. He knew of instances when admirable witches or wizards had risen from entirely muggle households – growing up eating muggle foods had not impaired their magical development. The thought gave him strength to endure the mistreatment – and no matter how sanguine the twins were about the food, Gellert could not call it anything but mistreatment: eating such food was a humiliation. Still, he wasn't being exposed to lasting harm, and that was at least something. That was arguably more than he deserved.

After less than a week, he had grown accustomed to the constant chatter of the twins, too, although he continued to consider how to make his eventual escape. The ridicule-spell on him (George dubbed it 'the Glimmerwolf') was still active on his skin, but he had never again seen it manifest. It seemed likely that the charm suppressing the jinx operated on the principle of house guest rights, rights which, in theory, grow stronger with time. Meanwhile, the jinx it was holding back would be fading, as jinxes always did. Gellert was careful to do nothing that might remind them of the necessity to cast it again. If all went well, there would come a day when the spell would weaken to the point of being ineffective.

But for now, being stuck as a house guest did have benefits: several of the current Weasleys Wizard Wheezes products were partially his invention, and he had unlimited access to them – including acceptable-quality shielded clothes, muting spray, and an Instant Darkness Firework in capsule form. He could reach the rooftop through the attic, and while this gave him only a limited amount of freedom (the neighbouring buildings were _all_ warded against trespassing), it did expand his living space, so that now he had access to an area twelve times the size of his former cell. He had had to show the boys how to cast a new camouflage charm, but they really liked the end result: now whoever set foot on their rooftop would appear as sunbathing dragons to any onlooker. (That detail was Fred's idea. Gellert would have preferred something less garish, like thestrals. But the colourful dragons were, he could grudgingly admit, more appropriate to the roof of a shop that sold children’s pranks.)

All of these benefits could be encompassed in one word: trust. Between the trust that he had carefully been building with the twins, and their own recklessness (courage that only a Gryffindor could be proud of), Gellert was steadily gaining ground. The most astonishing advance had come when George had laid his own wand in Gellert’s hand, so that he could demonstrate a new charm, rather than labour through describing it. His magic still resisted being performed in the undignified, uncivilized wandless way, and that was a frustration, but it had now become almost automatic for Fred or George to lend him their own wands when they wanted Gellert to teach them something new.

In light of all this, how was it that a single magical meal continued to be too much to ask for? It was not that he had stopped asking.

“Just the one time,” he found himself saying, once again. “We could call it… a special occasion.”

The twins looked at one another.

George spoke up first. “Look, Your Great-goodness, your behaviour _is_ truly exemplary.”

“And you can tell us apart, and you aided us in our revenge on Ludo Bagman.”

“And it's thanks to your prompting that now we have Tom Riddle's name and muddy little secret.”

“Inviting Scrimgeour over to Harry's aunt’s house for the birthday party was absolutely brilliant as well.”

Grindelwald suppressed a bitter sigh. Every line ended with an unspoken 'but'. He was a convicted dark wizard, even after he had pitted Scrimgeour's rabid propaganda staff against that worthless household of muggles, even if he managed to swallow back his curses every time he was mockingly called 'Greatling'. Even if he no longer had the Wand that made him the greatest in his category.

“You can just say no,” he said dejectedly, turning his attention to reading the outdated muggle newspaper his latest fish-and-chips had been wrapped in and ignoring their mock-praise for a few more rounds, until George mentioned:

“… you struggle with your conscience in your sleep.”

He did not! Did he?

“Nobody told me I talk in my sleep.”

“Talk? Sometimes you battle.”

“You threw bolts of lightning from the tips of your toes last night,” Fred giggled.

They had to be joking! “Wake me up next time,” he requested.

“Will do!” they both promised.

“Been planning to, anyway,” George continued. “It’s been getting more and more violent. First you really just spoke…”

“In French, German, Russian, and something we can't recognize,”

“Sometimes these all at the same time. But you always start in English. Is that your _first language_?” They both busted out laughing at the 'first language' pun.

“Wake me up,” he repeated.

In his experience, most of his reasonable requests met little resistance. They were ridiculed at first and sometimes twisted around, but other times they were quickly fulfilled. But when they had an opportunity, they couldn’t be trusted not to use these concessions as an occasion for a prank: the rascals had hidden a dung-bomb in his slippers when he'd first asked for some footwear, and had mixed up the bathroom potions he'd been so eager to use again so that later he couldn't tell which product was responsible for the blue sheen of his new teeth. He didn’t think they were likely to risk such a thing when waking him – that seemed a safe enough request – but he had been holding off asking for a new haircut, dreading what license they might take.

Gellert was coming to realize, though, that he preferred being pranked by these boys over the evident torture any sensible adult would have started with. Especially now that he had learned that they would accept being pranked back – it was no longer (unlike the food) the indignity that it had been in the beginning. One of Gellert’s pranks – the diluted disillusionment dye with which he had treated the back of George's trousers – was so successful that Fred had happily taken credit for it.

That joke had also revealed another aspect of the twins' bond. Fred had never admitted to not having made the slow-acting paint, and obviously Gellert hadn't, either. Yet the following morning, George had asked him about the exact recipe and dilution rate, as if the information about who was responsible had skipped from one Weasley to another overnight. Considering their intertwined magic, that might have exactly been the case. It also indicated that dividing the twins, building any sort of mistrust between them, was as impossible as making gold without the Philosopher's Stone. He had to win over both, and at the same time.

They had, Gellert was realizing, already come close to winning _him_ over. It took less and less effort to hold back from strangling them whenever they played a new trick on him. He had all but gotten used to the many mock-titles he'd been given, and he had given up counting the uses of 'your Great-goodness' weeks before, if only to spare his own sanity. And for all that he complained silently to himself about their headache-inducing habit of speaking in stereo, when both the twins left the building, the sudden quiet hit him and it was worse than any pranking. It reminded him of Nurmengard – of unbroken years without seeing or hearing another human being. Gellert could reluctantly admit that after so long alone, he liked sharing a space with the twins, even as chaotic as they were – on the surface.

Despite appearances, they were not only loyal to each other, but could be relied upon to keep their promises. Their declaration that they would ‘clean Gellert up’ had not been idle. He still felt much older than a 114-year old wizard - still too weak to escape, and still malnourished after over fifty years of imprisonment and solitude – but he was receiving regular meals, and he had more energy than he had had in decades. His moustache and eyebrows were shining like snow on a mountain peak, and his once impressive hair (George had called it FLUFFY when they got their hands on a news article from the '20s) was now flat and weak – but it was not as dull as when he'd first seen himself in the mirror on the night of his abduction. He had teeth, and clean skin, and trimmed nails, and had regained his voice with now regular use.

What more did the twins hope to achieve? There were still more than four months remaining before the date they had set for his unsolicited reconciliation with Albus: after the Hogwarts Express departed from the school for the Yule Break, but before the Weasley family's own Christmas festivities. The twins' new plot was not to let their headmaster 'celebrate' alone. It did not seem likely that Albus would consider Gellert to be much of a ‘gift,’ but with a weary sigh, he had agreed.

Gellert wondered how Albus would react to the surprise of his ‘rehabilitation,’ but his Sight only offered a plain blank nothing – as if trying to communicate that it would never happen. He couldn't yet see _why_ that plan of the twins would not work, but it had inspired him to set his mind to making an escape sometime in November.

That gave him plenty of time to forge several plans. Continued residence here as long as possible was the best option, especially now that the manhunt for him wasn't just a distant threat but a reality. Extending his welcome was essential. He owed his current rapport with the twins to Riddle being an under-educated brute: the boys had initially expected Gellert to be the same, but more so. Nevertheless, as a renowned villain, it would have seemed disingenuous to deny the same selfish lust for power. What made him different from Mr. No Name was that he had had everything that was required not just to seize power, but to keep it. Diplomacy, charm, knowing how to give the people who served him what they wanted even as he was planning for their obsolescence – _that_ was what had made him more dangerous, decades before, back when he had had a solid power base and his name wasn't a synonym for publicly annihilated evil. And that was what would keep him in Fred and George’s good graces now.

He settled for the night, dividing his attention between the plans on how to be less dependent on his keepers, and what to do about his erstwhile pillow, which had recently been transfigured into a knarl. Eventually he had to move the animal to the bathroom, as he was unable to reverse the transfiguration. He felt ridiculous without a wand.

A few hours later, Fred woke him. It was the middle of the night, and he could see his own electric blue flashes in the darkness before he completely came around.

“You seemed to be fighting,” the Weasley said, resting a hand on his shoulder.

“I… was trying to change the outcome of a battle,” he admitted, sparks still flying between his fingers even now as his breathing slowly eased and his heart slowed from pounding to simply noticeably too fast. “A real one. I did not, I suppose.” He sank back onto his pillow-less bed.

“What happened back then?” Fred asked. “In reality?”

“I was on another continent… Couldn't react in time. I lost allies as precious to me as you Order of the Phoenix members are to Dumbledore.”

“Well, that doesn't mean much,” the young wizard said in a grim tone. “Don’t get me wrong, the Professor was great when he finally showed up to battle against He Who… Riddle. But he didn't lose sleep over Little Lightning when it turned out he was starved half-dead by his uncle.”

“How do you know he didn't?”

The boy fell silent.

“I know Albus better than he will ever know himself, and if I have a conscience, then so does he.”

“You’re right we might never know. Greatling?”

“Yes?”

“Sleep well.”

“You too, Fred.”

Now that he had proof of his magic running amok in his sleep, his plans for the future took a very different turn. Even when the ‘Glimmerwolf’ would finally fade off completely, he could not leave the Weasley wards without either returning here to sleep, or finding a warded place to himself. Anything else would be suicide.

His great-aunt's place was the first that came to his mind, but that was the first place that Albus – or Aberforth, for that matter – would check for him. Then a vision of Albus observing the familiar fence gave him an idea: why not use her home as an excuse to test his warding abilities? He had come up with a number of ideas in captivity that he'd never had the chance to put into practice.

“As my plea for wizard-worthy food was denied, I dare to bother you with an alternative request,” he said the following morning. “Nothing for myself. If there's a witch my soul holds the least semblance to, it's my great-aunt, Bathilda Bagshot.”

That she had written several books was no news for him. The twins not knowing where she lived was a surprise, however. He tried to give a hint by mentioning 'some great inventors' originating from the same village, but the boys' eyes only lit up when they learned that the metal charmer of the first golden snitch had lived in Godric's Hollow as well.

Not bothering to educate them any further about the importance of the settlement, he started explaining why renewing the wards on the old lady's home would be important before the inevitable ransacking in search of the dark wizard whom the ICW had lost.

“Wait a second, you want us to take you along,” George realized first.

Why, yes. And he was willing to pay the price for it.

“I'm willing to swear an Unbreakable Vow to you,” he announced. “I’m willing to promise three things: First, I will never use my magic against you or any other Weasley, not even to defend myself.” That was a huge offer, although it still left open the possibility of using a magical object if needed, and it didn't say anything about opposing them _without_ using magic. “Second, whenever I leave this house, I will follow your every order even if you command me to kill a former ally of mine.” Gellert needed the twins to trust him completely, or they’d never even consider allowing him out – and he knew them well enough by now to know for certain that they'd never actually order him to kill _anyone._ Though if he was wrong about that, the truth was that he had no friends or allies left.

Neither of those two promises were so dangerous as the third – but given the boys’ complaints over the past weeks, he knew that it would be the one thing that could win them over to him from Albus. “Finally, I promise never to lie to either of you. I reserve the right to stay quiet, but if I speak, I'll not leave anything important out.”

He didn't let the twins see how gratified he was when they exchanged a shamelessly pleased grin. Careless, the both of them.

‘All three of us,’ he added to himself a moment later.


End file.
